Echoes
by rapid-apathy
Summary: She is trying to remember about those times. When she met the British officer who wrote the poem. A story on how Simcoe and Anna first met.
_AN: For a request on tumblr for something on how Simcoe and Anna first met. I couldn't really decide, and so this angsty thing came about :)_

 **OOO**

 _Do you remember? When they came? Everyone does._

 _Were you afraid? Did you hear the drums? Did you come out to see them all? The ships? The endless marching lines?_

 _Did you feel it? You already knew it too, right then, didn't you?_

 _That everything was ruined and over._

 _Everything._

 **OOO**

She has retired to her room. She's eighty six now. Sitting in bed. She rarely leaves that now. It's just too difficult.

At this point of the evening it is about half-past seven, and her daughter-in-law is going through boxes in her closet in her bedroom. Looking for something. It is a large rather bare room, with a green-clothed billiard table piled with boxes and crates of who knows what taking up half of it. The children's old toys are in one corner, stacked away in boxes. The billiard table is very old, it had already been in the family before her daughter-in-law was even born. It's just the two of them left now.

In her hand, a lengthy poem of love that she had kept all these years. It was written by a British officer, from those days, stuffed away in an old box found up on a forgotten shelf.

Her daughter in law asks her about it, wants her to tell her about him, but Anna doesn't know, she tells her dismissively, it's been so long.

But she's insistent. You saved it for some reason, didn't you? Tell me about him.

Throw it away then, she says pettily.

Oh come now, Mother.

She never talks about when they came, about the war, when everything changed forever. There are some wounds that are too painful, thoughts that remain razor sharp. There are some things so delicately wound through our hearts that just a mere word or image or dream can unravel us.

She can hardly remember her grandson's name, what he looks like, even what year it is, but his face. The face. Still so clear. As if she just saw it, just now. How could it have been so long ago? Everyone from then. So vivid and alive, untouched by time. Every good and painful memory alike seemingly, preserved. A strange melancholic ache wracks through her as she reads over the poem, as the images with the pain and despair and pleasure and terror bound to them come back.

She hadn't thought about him in so long.

Her mind goes to think of how she met him, and then she realizes with a profound sadness, she can't remember. It makes her laugh in surprise. She's so old and forgetful now, always cold, always in pain, wrapped in shawls and curled at the back and joints. She has not been the desirable woman that drives men to their primal cores, to lash out, to kill, to destroy one another, themselves, in some time. There's no war at the gates—against the skin, anymore. Those days like a strange dream now. No one comes for her anymore. And now, what she has left, her memories, her mind, taken and distorted. The glacial advance of time taking everything, everyone, leaving her in the company of her own cruel, deceitful mind. Leaving her utterly and entirely alone.

So she tries to remember the man who would have burnt the world, slayed it entire, if had she only asked.

To remember about those times. When they came. When she met the British officer who wrote the poem.

 **OOO**

Fifty or so years ago there was a man onboard a ship. He's not an officer yet, it's after a bloody and tragic skirmish he will earn that distinction. But that hasn't happened just yet. No, he's just enlisted as a foot soldier for a war on the other side of the world. He's tall and strong and it's not a surprise he ends up here, fighting comes naturally to him, he is eager. He becomes a grenadier easily. He will become much more than that. He's watching as his homeland passes by, the ship makes it way slowly out of the bay, it giving him time to reflect to indulge in a touch of melancholia, to let the moment be remembered; the sadness, the excitement, the promise of escape.

It's the springtime but in this part of the world there is really just one season, hot, monotonous, it's in the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal. And at the base of his turmoil, an overwhelming sense of relief. On the port of the sea, ships tower above like a forest of masts and the rope and canvas canopies that stretch out as far into the bay as the eye can see. Dense green marsh and jungle stop suddenly and then like everything, like childhood by adulthood, it is overtaken and then there is nothing but the endless sea, in its natural beauty, formless, beyond compare.

 **OOO**

As the evening goes on, the first recollection comes forward. She can see it. Fragments really. They're all silent images, with scenes missing, gaps of time and logic, the words empty and lost, a piled damaged collection of stills. The woman, that would be her, who runs the tavern prepares the rooms before they come. The first place they come to is the tavern. The world over. Before she will even realize, three officers will be billeted in her tavern and one in her own home.

One has already arrived and demanding to be shown his room. She hears him down the stairs, talking to Cicero. Coming into view as she slowly steps down the stairs the voice comes into view, black boots, white breeches, red coat in that order. An officer, unclear on rank. When he notices her, he immediately comes forward, extending his hat as he introduces himself. He's a lieutenant. With some numbered this or other. That means nothing to her.

He follows her up the stairs. She stops in front of a door and pushing it open for him she stands back. She points into the room and apologizes it's so small, but the other rooms are full. Breakfast is at seven-twenty, soup at eleven and dinner at four. But they keep the soup on until ten or until it is gone. There's laundry—

That'll be fine, he interrupts her, he's not interested. He looks inside but then back to her. He's more interested in her. Everything is fine, he says.

She grabs the pitcher to refill it while he brings his luggage in. Perhaps it was then she recognized he was an impatient person, one who could be easily given to cruelty. But there's a feeling, something about the way he gently speaks, a politely guised brutality, the way he carries on as if he belongs there, the way he looks at her. It's as if he alone embodies the whole, the war, he and the war are intrinsically the same, imposing, suffocating, disrupting, threatening, everywhere, pressing down upon her.

It was then she knew she hated him. Maybe he could have been anyone. Perhaps it had to be him.

They talk about something. Maybe he asks her if she's worked there long. She tells him not very, but she owns it, along with her husband. His demeanor shifts slightly. Becomes a little colder. He nods and says her husband is quite fortunate to have such a wife, to help in such a place.

She sighs dismissively, defensively and starts to say something but he stops her, smiles, apologizes. No, he explains, you misunderstand. He likes it. It takes quite a dedicated woman to keep it up so nicely. He tells her how strange it is for him to see such a gorgeous woman in a tavern. She just doesn't understand how different it is for him. He's just not used to it. He's still in a bit of shock. A woman as lovely as she, he says, she could do anything she likes.

She doesn't answer him. She feels embarrassed, warm suddenly. She politely smiles and reminds him of breakfast in the morning and turns to leave.

He calls after her, and she stops keeping her back to him. He asks, will she be the one serving breakfast? She tells him she will be.

Then, he says, I shan't miss it for the world.

 **OOO**

Another. It was in the springtime. The moment Anna saw him she recognizes him. It is the officer who had passed her by a few days before.

This day he is alone.

He is coming out of the barracks. While the rest of the crowd of men hurries out the doors and pushes their way past, dispersing into the town, he takes his time coming out. When he makes his way down the hill and reaches the walkway, he looks around and squints his eyes, adjusting to the light, he does not see her, he is carrying his coat with one hand slung over his shoulder. He squares his hat first and then with a movement of his arm swings the coat around and slips his arms into it, taking his time.

He scans the docks in the vicinity of the barracks. Anna leaning on a post between two trees at the corner of a building. Directly across front of him, hidden in plain sight, unmoving, she waits for him to make up his mind which way to go. Another soldier comes up and talks to him and they exchange a few words briefly. He is not as young as she had first thought when she had seen him. He's incredibly tall, attractive at the right angle, she could admit. She keeps watching him. Why watch this particular officer? Then, there was no reason, she was simply waiting for Abigail at their meeting spot after running errands; now of course the points of fate all connect in retrospect, when it's too late, serves no use, when it only serves to make you question sanity and God.

Then he sees her. She quickly averts her eyes, but when she looks back he is still looking at her. She suddenly becomes afraid. Why? She doesn't know really. He calls out moving towards her, Ma'am, excuse me. Don't I know you? She looks around as if he could possibly mean anyone else. Me? Yes, wait just a moment. No, she says, he must be mistaken. She tells him she's done nothing wrong. He smiles like she's made a joke not realizing she hasn't. He crosses the wide dusty street and walks up to her. Yes, you work at the tavern, he says, I recognize you.

He looks around and sees she's alone. Introduces himself. He's even taller, more imposing, up close and she feels like he could crush her without much effort at all. He tells her he's just on his way to the tavern himself. Does she require any help? She tells him no, her girl will be there any minute to help her, she's just running behind getting the days last butcher's cuts, it's not necessary. You're sure? He points at the heavy sack of grain she set on the ground leaning against her leg and the stack of awkward-to-carry sifter boxes she had picked up from being repaired in her arms. He goes to pick up the grain sack but she tries to stop him, pleads with him not to trouble himself. It's not a problem at all, he says overly-cheerfully, smiling, picking up the sack despite her protest and slinging it onto his shoulder and then taking the boxes out of her arms. He says, Allow me to assist two burdened damsels in distress.

So she lets him, having no real choice. She, politely annoyed, he, unashamedly elated; he gestures for her to lead the way and he follows behind. They keep a step apart. He tries to get her to talk. She doesn't. So he tells her a joke. She tries to hide it but he gets her to laugh a little.

There is an in contact between them, which does not stem from an intimate knowledge of each other but, on the contrary, an unknown force pulling them towards such knowledge. They don't know it yet. They both have the same expression of mute curiosity, of terror, of an unsurpassable distance.

 **OOO**

She only sees the fragments. But some clearer than the rest. So some of it must be true. Maybe all of it.

Perhaps how it started is not as important as how it ended.

Regardless of how she met the British officer who wrote her the poem, this is what she remembers and knows is true but cannot say.

 **OOO**

They're in the room with the oak four poster and a blue quilt, it's like the one she had at the house, but that can't be right. The details confused, but those are merely backdrop. Why she remembers it there, in that house, she does not know—she doesn't want to.

It must have happened unexpectedly. There's an urgency, maybe an aggression in the air. He's fully dressed but she's in nothing but a nightgown. Her hair is down. Feet are bare. At first, they speak of something, briefly, heatedly. She turns to leave. Then he the pursuer, she the captive. He looks down at her. That look. The memory of fear. The smell of woodsmoke on his clothes. His body pressing against hers.

It must have been in the autumn. Or winter. He just came in from outside, his hands are frightfully cold against her skin. He lays her out on the bed. She no longer feels anything in particular, not revulsion, not contempt. Not even fear. It is desire, she realizes. And there she turns away not looking at him. And he, slow, patient, draws her to him and starts to undress her. Slowly. He pushes the hem of the white gown up over her knees. But he isn't watching his hand, he is watching her face. Her every reaction to his touch. She makes as if to help him. He tells her to keep still. Let me do it. He says he will do it. When he tells her to, she moves her body for him, carefully, gently, as if not to disturb him. He exposes her, the white thighs, the dark apex of her sex, soft flat of her belly, over the plump pretty breasts, lifts the thin nightgown from her arms and tosses it aside. Looks down at her, watches her like that as he removes his own clothes, he tells her she's, beautiful, so beautiful. He keeps saying it.

Taught muscles runs beneath milky skin, jumping and flexing at his every touch, move, word. And she lets him have his way, expecting him to be rough because that's how it should be with him, it can't be any other way but to leave her bruised and vindicated in her hatred, but because he is cruel, he caresses and touches her with an agonizing tenderness, slow and deliberate. He pins her body beneath his, she's unable to move, to concentrate on anything else but the feeling of him inside her, to hear every word he says, to saturate her senses in him, his smell, his taste, forcing her to know he is the one who is giving her this pleasure and that she is the one letting it happen, again and again, shamefully desiring more.

She doesn't know how many times it happened. She might have been weak enough to let it happen countless times, for months, maybe years. Maybe only once. But that time, or when he possesses her again in memory, he touches her in a way that both wounds and heals, it's too much. His touch bring tears. Almost like a consolation. With the others she's never cried. But that day in that room, tears console both for the past and for the future. She remembers.

When he sees she is crying he whispers to her. Tells her it's alright. He'll stop, if she wants him to. She doesn't answer him. He kisses her eyes, her lips and he lays his head upon her as she weeps. He's stopped moving. Doesn't say anything, he doesn't tell her not to cry, he only holds her, caressing her gently. She apologizes. He tells her not to but she does it again anyway.

She speaks to him. The words eroded with time, but the feeling still clearer than any image. He listens as she speaks of her loneliness, her unhappiness. He tells her he's lonely too. He starts to go on, perhaps to confess his own pain, to tell her that it's this overwhelming love for her that leaves him so empty, that makes him suffer so terribly, but he falls silent. He never says it in those words. I love you, is what he tells her. He loves her so much, he says, that nothing can matter to him.

You can't understand. He says he knows already she'll never love him. She lets him say it. At first she says she doesn't know. Then she lets him say it. He lets her speak, watches her, leaves light tender kisses on her skin, he caresses her, perhaps he's not listening anymore, she doesn't know.

She speaks without waiting for reply. An endless stream purging forth. He already knows her feelings, on everything, she isn't afraid. She realizes. She isn't afraid of him, not there like this. In the safety of the dark she can say anything, do anything. He doesn't answer her. Caresses her. She finds it harder to speak now. He tells her something very softly, quietly, that makes her heart ache and desire stir. In that moment, if she remembered nothing else, she might have thought she was in love in with him. If only in the moments in the aching darkness.

They speak like that to each other, very quietly, his lips brushing hers. They must have shared everything they never shared with others. Safe in the knowledge it was over before it began. It is only because of the perversity of this kind of love, because they have no future, because no proper kind of love can exist, they can be themselves. And then his whispers tell of his love, his pain, his need against her mouth, almost silently as he possesses her. And then their pain is taken in its turn, changed, slowly drawn away, borne toward pleasure, clasped to it.

The sea, formless, simply beyond compare.

 **OOO**

She won't remember it because she never saw him. To his right an ensign is shuffling a deck of cards. The entire tavern is full, every table and chair, men standing in corners, hanging around the outside, it's stifling inside, you can hardly breathe. The smell of ale, smoke, sweat drenched woolens and the heaviness of fried fat pervade the air. He's sitting in the back corner near an open window playing cards, he's up by three so far. He's just arrived and it's late into the night, most of the men taking advantage to drink well at a rather boring location with a rather accommodating tavern.

The ensign, the one shuffling cards, a young spindly man who constantly uses his hands in annoying forward gestures has a 'killer' joke he's trying to tell while the cards flip from his one hand to the next, it's a rhyming one, and going large and dramatically on about something that gave a maiden such a fright, being chased by something small, white—and before he could finish his comedic set up, she, the tavern girl, glides in between tables and directly in front of Lieutenant Simcoe, her skirt brushing his knee, so close he can smell the sharp meady kitchen odor of her arm as she reaches out her pitcher to fill his empty glass. She's wearing a rather simple brown dress with an ample skirt, a thread bare apron tied at the waist with small little roses printed upon it, a fitted bodice and low scoop from the white soft lacing of which her long sweat sheened neck gracefully rises. Over the loud noise of the full house he shouts a 'thank you' and she glances over her shoulder and smiles. Her Irish profile sweetened by a touch of German softness, which adds a look of mysterious expectancy and wistful surprise to her beauty. With a scoundrel's morose gaze he burns to memory the pure proud line of that throat, of the determined little tilted chin. The glossy pink lips are full and slightly parted, avid and fey, offering a gleam of petite white teeth. He learns, falls in love with, that high cheekbone, the forward upsweep of sooty lashes and the charcoal painted eyes.

A natural masterpiece, incomparably fine.

In mere seconds he sees all of this, decades of detail in mere moments to be drawn upon for the rest of his life. But you see, this meeting, their first, she never even realizes, he's another bloody-back and in a loud, obnoxious, tolerated yet unwanted sea of the same. He could have been anyone. And before the ensign can finish that joke, without missing a beat, she, moving to the next table says, Really Ensign, no one wishes to hear about your prick. The entire tavern erupts into laughter, fists pound and the tables clatter. They all love her.

And why wouldn't they?

Whenever she moves to her feet, goes from one spot to another, whenever she tucks in a loose lock of hair, or sits down, her movements are sensual. The ensign's dignity now being fully shredded is nothing but background noise. He watches her. He's more interested in her.

He wants the woman from the tavern. He wants her so badly it will make him weep. He doesn't know it yet, but he will want her so badly it will make him want to die.

 **OOO**

Every memory lays out before her, an endless formless sea, pulling the threads of her memories apart, further out into boundless abyss. The scourge of old age has been upon her for some time, robbing her bit by bit of her life, of herself. Suddenly, one day it seems, a life long past is all she can see while the one in front of her is vague and disconnected. A parent long dead is expected to come home, not the great grandchild who is always a stranger, as is everyone around her. It's cruel, life is. Simply.

Did he carry her to death? Surely he said her name. What other name would he say before dying? He has been dead some thirty years. He was not very old. Surely, his memory of her never was taken from him. Will she carry him to death as well? Out of all the people she knew, loved, hated or cared for, she comes to realize her memory of him remains one the clearest, most vivid. Random people and bits and jumbled pieces from a million years ago. The silent moments of a life already long gone. The way he first held her so tenderly as if her very touch would shatter him. The moments woven between and through little sounds, touches, and everything we carry with us of another person, their idiosyncrasies, anxious finger wiggling, tender caresses, scathing sarcasm, things whispered, the cruelty and desperate desire, the pleas, the explosive and endless anger.

She wonders, does anyone else remember him now? Not as a dressed up ancestor in a portrait, or as some rank or title, but the way she does, from those days. The reckless, ambitious, vengeful officer that struck terror into his superiors as well as inferiors. A young towering man. Beautifully icy eyes. The sarcastic jester. The privately, with her, the well-guarded John Simcoe, the one who wrote insane declarations of love in the most tender poems, the affable, eager to please one who would follow her around like an attention starved child, trying to help her in whatever possible manner he could be of service to her. Always trying to be her hero. That was all he ever wanted to be. Only he never knew how, he felt everything too deeply, too intensely and like a savage marauder who doesn't know how to express his love and mistakenly kills everyone he loves, he suffered. His first impulse is always to kill, to wipe out, to hold sway over life, to scorn, to pursue, to make suffer.

He sent her a letter many years after she last saw him, after the war, after marriages and children and new countries and new wars, it told her he was very important now and of his daughter's death and how it prompted him to try to find her. Why he said, he wasn't sure, perhaps because the death of a part of his heart made him realize the only other part left was still with her. He told her to take care of it for him. She never heard from him again.

Is it she alone who carries that John Simcoe around?

She wonders if he ever loved his wife, she imagines he didn't, he couldn't, she imagines he never loved like that again, how could he possibly let himself? How could he bear it? She thinks it took him some time to not think of the woman from the tavern anymore, to make love to another without seeing the little American whore who couldn't love him.

 **OOO**

Later that night she weeps, alone, silently. Because it was so long ago. Because he was cruel and so was she and one ought not to weep for that kind of lover. But she cannot help it, she's trying to remember the beginning of the story. The one where she met the British officer that madly loved her. So she does not forget this one. That someone loved her that deeply, truly, insanely so. That was for her alone. Is hers. Always. Even still. She wants to remember. To carry it to death. Before he's gone forever.


End file.
